Its petty ambitions, jealousies and internal intrigues contrasted vividly with the humility of the shammes, whose son was indeed the only Zionist in the practical meaning of the word, since he was “there,” in Israel.

But the solution was temporary, and the lease has almost expired, so our hero shammes I always thought it was shamus, but this is the Yiddish version is trying to crack his case under the shadow of Reversion, when the land will revert back to the U.S. and the Jews may be homeless once more.

In later years, Asher Washinsky, now assumed to be a ruined man, was reported to be working as a shammes, a janitor, in a small synagogue in South America, or was it South Africa, or was it South Australia, but he could just as easily have been out drinking himself to death.

In Hebrew, however, perhaps unknown to the shammes, there is an official notification to the father of the fact that the letter was found among the dead son’s belongings, with the recommendation that it should be sent to his father.